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Thursday, November 27, 2008

Arab sites almost silent on Mumbai

The top news story in the world is essentially invisible to the Arab press.

The Palestinian Arabic newspapers Firas Press and Palestine Press Agency don't mention the terror attacks in Mumbai. Ya Libnan has nothing, and neither does the Lebanon Daily Star or the Jordan Times. The Daily News Egypt is similarly silent.

The Saudi Arab News did have a story in today's edition, though.

And the Islamic Jihad mouthpiece Palestine Today has a brief article, talking only about their taking Israelis hostage in the Chabad House in Mumbai and nothing about the hundred people killed so far. (The autotranslation said "According to Indian media reported four gunmen holding hostage in 6 Israelis built the Bad Religion of the Jews" and it repeated the word "Bad" three times, which sounded unusually anti-semitic for that newspaper until I realized that this was how "Chabad" was being translated from Arabic to English.)

Is it that Muslims killing a hundred people is simply not too interesting to them? Or does their latent sympathy for terrorism - and hatred of Indian infidels - make them embarrassed to mention it, so they'd rather ignore the story rather than figure out how to report it?